This is a land where Osprey perch
on the desert bluff
forty feet above our anchor chain
snaking black into crystal depths.
A land where sand dune becomes mountain
and the reflections on the water
are cactus dreams basking in a sun
hot as a baker’s oven.
Where nomad whales and their dolphin escorts,
mate and birth in fantasies
filled with seashell echoes and azure sunlight shafts,
whose only nightmares are of the long-departed land.
This land where a thousand roosters crow
under a city’s bougainvillea;
like priests they chant to dispel
dark night’s damp breath,
to push back death’s promise,
once more to summon up the sun.
In this land earth’s pallette
is bright color swirled in flower and bird
reflected in the deep dreams of desert dwellers
in the deep sleep of vagabonds of the sea
whose memories are Chocolata clams,
are the cactus, avocadoes,
the Osprey, are the sea turtle,
are the island, the sand dune,
the mountain.
Are the scorpion, the lizard, the spider,
are the ocean , the dolphin, the whale,
whose memories are ancient inhabitants
drawing pictures on stone wall
to tell their children, to explain
these distant dreams that dance our sleep,
layer upon layer,
this land,
of dreams.
Murdoch Hughes
